#i thought maybe it got worse this morning because yesterday i was crocheting with a tiny hook and thread yarn

[jedi-bird]

Everything hurts, I'm bored because I can't do anything with pain, finally got to a point where most of the numbness wore off so I tried to crochet (this time with a much bigger hook and yarn) and the numbness and tingling came back immediately. I'm getting sick of just sitting and doing nothing.

[tunedtostatic]

galaxies of my heart

Vikady, also featuring Sana and a brief Krejjh cameo

CW: injury, aftermath of torture, painkiller drugs, brief domestic violence mention (not named characters), food, discussion of medical trauma & painkiller controversies

As she speaks, one of her hands makes what could be the beginning of a motion to reach for Arkady, then folds back into her lap. Arkady wonders if Sana gave her a crash course on Not Touching Your Loved Ones Without Warning After They’ve Been Tortured Because They Might Freak Out, or if that was something she already knew from her time as a medic. Either possibility feels depressingly plausible.

I finished my first tscosi fic! In which injuries are cared for, miscommunications are miscommunicated, assumptions are countered, and kisses are kissed. Title (and lyrics referenced in the fic) are from “space girl” by Frances Forever, even though it’s kind of a fluffy song relative to some of the subject matter, but not to worry, I have a permit [unfolds a sheet of paper that reads “I was working on my Vikady fanmix in the morning the day I started this fic and got it stuck in my head big time”]

Edit: I realized 9k is a little long to be easily navigable in post form so I archived this as well. I just learned when attempting to post a credited picrew that Tumblr is still hiding posts with links, but it’s at archiveofourown dot org, /works/31851859.

Edit the second: Re-reading “adrenaline makes you do stupid things” by jaggedwolf and I'm 90% sure I accidentally stole a couple things from there rather than the general primordial soup of my brain (the line "That can't be comfortable" and maybe the general concept of Arkady making sure she gets hurt before the person she's been captured with), so adding this to give credit where due to a really great fic that you should definitely read if you haven't already.

~

The first time Arkady surfaces, everything around her is still coated in a haze as though she’s dreaming. The room is quiet, and when she takes a sharp breath in, all of a sudden Violet is leaning over her, her hair swinging near Arkady’s face.

“You’ve got very dynamic hair,” Arkady says, or at least tries to say, and then she’s asleep again.

The next time she wakes up, she wakes up completely, although her mind still feels a little foggy. Her body aches, and—yeah, based on that ceiling, she’s definitely in the medbay of the Iris 2. Which means that they made it back to the ship, or at least that Arkady did—

Fear surges through her, and she peers back and forth. Her eyes land on Sana, who is sitting to the right of her bed, crocheting something that sprawls across her lap in chaotic loops.

Her intention is to say Sana’s name, but she can’t even make it through the first syllable, emitting a sound that sounds more like the “Ssss” of the litter of feral kittens Brian and Krejjh found that one time. Great job, Patel, you’d make a better hissing kitten than a first mate. Krejjh is going to have to stop calling you First Mate Patel and start calling you Feral Kitten Patel—

The thought of Krejjh is enough to make Arkady’s whole mind flinch. Krejjh—

The feral kitten hiss must have been loud enough for Sana to hear, though, because she’s dropping her crocheting to her lap, looking toward Arkady.

“Kady,” she says warmly, at the same time as Arkady croaks, “Krejjh—”

“Is fine.” Sana’s hand comes up to rest on the pillow next to Arkady’s cheek, a steadying presence, though she doesn’t touch her.

“They were with me.”

“They were.” Sana nods. “But they’re here and they’re not hurt. Hanging out with Brian in the kitchen as we speak.” She glances through the medbay door before her gaze bounces back to Arkady, and it’s such a familiar Sana kind of motion that Arkady feels the remainder of her panic fade slightly. Speaking of octopuses of myth and legend, that’s Sana, one mental tendril keeping track of the approximate status of each member of her crew at any given time.

“How are you feeling?” Sana continues. “Park said you were in a lot of pain before you passed out. Violet has you on a painkiller drip, but she’s using the minimum the way you always want. If you’re in pain, we can raise the dose.”

Arkady turns her attention more fully to her body. Pain and sensation are present, but muffled, as though they are far away. Ribs: hurt. Arm: hurts significantly. Legs: hurt, but only a little.

It’s bearable. “I’ve had worse.”

“Kady—”

“I’m fine, Sana. Just feels like…what do you call them…colors, purple, ouch…bruises.” She shakes her head, then stills with a wince. “The others?”

“Everyone’s safe.” Sana pats the pillow where her hand rests next to Arkady’s cheek. “Park found you and Krejjh before anyone laid a finger on them. He got out fine, too. You’re the only one who was hurt, Kady.”

Arkady studies Sana’s face. “How…bad is it?”

“Six fractures, no serious tissue injuries.” Sana’s voice is gentle but matter-of-fact. “We’re going to pick up some skeletal accelerators next time we’re on-planet. Violet thinks that with those in the mix, the worst,” she gestures to the cast on Arkady’s right wrist, “should be mended in about two months.”

Arkady closes her eyes. One day, everything is fine, the next, a few backwater IGR assholes get the drop on them, and now she’s going to be out of commission for two months.

Still. Better her than Krejjh.

The thought is an icily familiar one, although yesterday she was limited to the grimmer Better just the two of us than the others. Krejjh was tied up on the other side of the room, and when the IGR goons got bored beating on Arkady, or kicked her in the wrong place and just killed her, they’d move on to Krejjh, and there was nothing Arkady could do about it—

Arkady’s eyes fly open, and she turns her head to nudge it clumsily into Sana’s hand. Sana cups Arkady’s cheek in her palm, thumb brushing over her cheekbone, wiping away wetness. When Arkady exhales, her breath is shaky. Stupid. They’re all safe now.

“They didn’t hurt Krejjh?” Her voice doesn’t sound like her own, unsteady and small.

“They didn’t hurt Krejjh.”

“Can I walk? Before the two months?” Her voice is still so small. Stupid.

Sana brushes Arkady’s temple with her fingertips, her calloused palm still warm against Arkady’s cheek. “Violet says she thinks you’ll be able to use a walking cast in three or four weeks. Or a little earlier, depending on how quickly the accelerators work their magic.”

Arkady keeps her eyes closed. “Those aren’t cheap.”

“That’s what rainy-day funds are for.”

“Do we even have a rainy-day fund anymore?”

“I will shake Other Violet down for loose change if I have to, Kady.” Sana’s fingers caress her temple again, and there is steel in her voice as she says, “This is my ship, and when one of my crew needs something, I find a way.”

“I know you do.” Arkady opens her eyes, though she finds that her eyelids seem to have grown heavier in the intervening minutes. She blinks sleepily at Sana. “You’re such a good octopus.”

Sana beams. “Thank you, Kady! I…have some questions,” she adds, “but they can wait until later, I think.”

Arkady’s eyelids are so heavy, but there’s one other thing she needs to ask. “Vi’?”

“Violet’s okay, too. She’s been taking care of you since yesterday, but I shooed her off to get some sleep.”

Arkady smiles. “’nks, S’na.”

Sana smiles back. “We’re all okay,” she says tenderly, “and if anyone out there tries to change that, I will demolish them.”

Arkady nods against Sana’s hand, straining to keep her eyes open.

“We’re all okay, Kady,” Sana repeats, and Arkady lets herself slip into sleep.

~

There are hours of restless dreams, and a dreamlike interlude where someone gently shakes her awake, holding her head up and helping her drink a medicine cap of chalky fluid, before she slips back into dreams that finally segue into deep sleep.

There is quiet music playing the next time she wakes up. She can remember where she is this time, and she lies with her eyes closed for a minute, enjoying the sound of the instrumental jazz track she recognizes from Krejjh and Brian’s Infinite Space-Themed Playlist. In the darkness behind her eyes, she doesn’t have to face the fact that she can’t walk, or run, or kick, or punch, or protect the crew, or—

Okay, maybe the space behind her closed eyelids isn’t as restful as it could be. Arkady opens her eyes.

Violet is sitting beside her bed with one leg tucked up on the chair, reading a tablet. A few strands of hair have fallen from behind her ear to brush against her cheek, and she’s biting her lower lip the way she sometimes does when she’s focused on something. Brian’s little retro radio music player is sitting on the bedside table, continuing to ooze soft jazz as Violet lifts an absentminded finger to tap to the next page, then curls her hand back into her soft sweater.

Yeah, eyes open? Definitely an improvement.

She should probably say Violet’s name, regardless of how endearing it is to watch her read. Before she has a chance to do so, though, she must breath loudly or make some kind of noise, because Violet looks up, her face crinkling into a tired smile.

“Hey,” she says softly.

Arkady smiles. “Hey, Liu. Good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” Violet’s smile quavers for a second. “Really, really good.”

Arkady tries to make her voice reassuring. “Hey, I’m okay, Violet, huh? It’s gonna be okay.”

Violet rolls her eyes, a small smile blossoming on her lips. “You’re the one in the medbay bed, Arkady. I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

As she speaks, one of her hands makes what could be the beginning of a motion to reach for Arkady, then folds back into her lap. Arkady wonders if Sana gave her a crash course on Not Touching Your Loved Ones Without Warning After They’ve Been Tortured Because They Might Freak Out, or if that was something she already knew from her time as a medic. Either possibility feels depressingly plausible.

“It sounds like you have been taking care of me.” Arkady smiles again. “Sana said you were here with me all night until she made you get some rest.” She thinks back, trying to pin down a faint memory. “I remember seeing you, leaning over me?”

“Yeah, you woke up really briefly last night.” Violet wrinkles up her forehead in that adorable way that she does. “You said something that sounded like, um…‘You’ve have hair’?”

Arkady grins. “Well shit, Liu, you sure do have hair, don’t you?”

Violet laughs, shaking her head back and forth. Her hair bobs around as though a breeze is passing through the medbay, and Arkady laughs too, then winces as the pain in her ribs flares.

Violet stills instantly. “You have some fractured ribs—”

“Yeah, kinda put that together.” Arkady tries to breathe with the minimum possible amount of motion.

The expression on Violet’s face makes it look like she’s in pain herself. “Would you like me to up the dose on your painkiller drip?” she asks softly.

“Nah.” Along with the flaring pain in her ribs, both of Arkady’s legs and her right wrist have that same itching, burning ache. The rest of her body is just sore, like she’s covered in bruises, which she probably is. “Uh, speaking of which, though. Could I get a rundown on what’s, you know, busted? Sana said I had…six? seven?...fractures, but we didn’t get into specifics beyond the two-month limit.” She grimaces a little at the thought.

“Six,” Violet confirms immediately, before adding, with an abashed smile, “I mean, not that that makes things that much better than seven?”

Arkady resists the impulse to laugh again, confining herself to a snort. “Can’t argue that point.”

“In answer to your question,” Violet begins, slipping into her calm medic tone of voice, “you have two cracked ribs and fractures to your left foot and right ankle. They broke your right wrist pretty badly, and I’m going to need to be very careful about injecting any accelerators there, especially if we can’t find an actual doctor on-planet to do it, so it might be a little more than two months before any, uh, heavy use, but you should have the hard cast off earlier than that.”

“Right.” Arkady inhales through her nose; exhales through her mouth. “Could have been worse, right?” At least she isn’t blubbering the way she was with Sana, but her voice still drops too small and quiet on the last word.

“It could have.” Violet’s own reply is almost a whisper, and Arkady silently swears at herself for her choice of phrasing.

When she looks up, though, Violet doesn’t look weepy.

She looks furious.

“Hey, you okay there, Liu?” Arkady stares at Violet’s clenched jaw and balled fists. “You look like you’re about to blow a gasket.”

Violet laughs a little, flexing her fingers and curling her hands more loosely back against her sweater. “Did you pick that one up from Tripathi?”

“That’s not a mechanic expression. Everyone uses that expression.”

Violet gives her a skeptical look.

“Okay, yeah, I may have picked it up from the captain. It’s still a normal-person expression, though.”

Violet chuckles, and they both lapse into silence.

This is nice, Arkady tells herself. Spending time with Violet is nice. It’s nice, it’s pleasant, it’s a way to distract herself from the itching, burning ache in her limbs and the creeping dread of knowing that if the ship is boarded, Arkady can’t even run, much less protect anyone else.

“Speaking of Tripathi,” Violet says with a smile, “I should give you an update on the latest, ahem, on-ship situation. Our captain has declared that next time she has a free moment she’s going to tear out that weird shallow closet in the hall next to Park’s room and put in inset cabinets for towels and stuff so Park and RJ and I don’t have to cross the ship for them. But when RJ found out, they said…”

Arkady tries to listen to Violet’s narration of Sana and RJ’s stalemate about the cabinets, smiling at the appropriate points while keeping a lid on the sinking feeling of knowing that for not days but weeks, she’ll be able to do jack-all do protect either Sana or RJ, or Violet, who is sitting here smiling at Arkady with love and trust in her eyes as though half the universe isn’t out to get them here in their one fragile ship that Violet wouldn’t even be on if Arkady hadn’t tricked her onto it in the first place—

She shoves the thoughts away, focusing on formulating a reply to Violet’s story. “Well, if it devolves into fisticuffs, Sana could take them, but if Sana calls a vote, I’m pretty sure Brian and Krejjh will side with RJ about the sheet music, and I don’t know what or whether Park would care.” She grins. “So, even odds.”

Violet snorts. “Well, I’ll keep you apprised, assuming none of the combatants wander in here to make their case to you themselves.”

“Medbay and a show?”

“On this ship? I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Arkady grins again. “I don’t know why Krejjh thinks being an outlaw is boring. The way we live, we practically produce our own shampoo.”

Violet snorts again before adding, in the kind of giggle-whisper Arkady most closely associates with grade-school gossip, “I can’t believe they got RJ into Sh'th Hremreh.”

“I know.” Arkady bites back another grin. “I mean, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. Krejjh can be very persuasive.”

“If by ‘being persuasive’ you mean ‘talking loudly and enthusiastically about a piece of media until everyone in their general vicinity is compelled by gravitational media force to watch the thing in question,’ then yes, I guess you could refer to it that way.”

“I notice it hasn’t worked on you yet.” Arkady raises an eyebrow. “Or has it?”

“No, I have not dipped into Sh'th Hremreh.” Violet raises an eyebrow. “Yet.”

Arkady bites down on another chest-killing laugh before it can escape, glancing toward the radio on the bedside table. “Speaking of Brian and Krejjh creations. The notorious Infinite Space-Themed Playlist, huh?”

Violet smiles, gazing at Arkady tenderly. “You seemed a little restless in your sleep, and I’ve always hated total quiet when I’m sick, so I thought maybe it’d be nice to put on some background music.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Arkady pushes away an obscure flash of annoyance at the sentimentality of Violet taking the time to put on this playlist for an asleep Arkady as though something as trivial as music is a priority when Arkady is down for the count and Krejjh is doubtless drained from yesterday themself and the whole crew is going to have to figure out how to scrape by and cover piloting shifts and handle everything with no security officer and a stressed pilot and a tired medic and—

She shoves the annoyance aside, telling herself not to be an ass. There are literal studies showing that music is good for mental and physical health, right? And she sure as shit could use as much distraction as possible from the ache of her ribs and her ankle and her messed-up wrist. Having a playlist on is nice. This is nice.

Holst’s The Planets has come on, making for a somewhat grim background compared with the rest of the playlist, and Violet leans forward to jab irritably at the advance button until a benign rock song begins.

Arkady gives her an inquiring look, and Violet sighs, biting her lip again.

“I am so angry,” she says finally. “About what they did to you.”

“You and me both, trust me.”

Violet sighs, slumping in her chair. “You and me aren’t the only ones who are. Krejjh was pretty…shaken. Brian and Sana have been there for them, obviously,” she adds hastily, “and they’re doing fine. We can take care of each other. We are taking care of each other. The last thing I want to do is make you worry about us. But…” She trails off. “This isn’t just another day on the Iris. Not for any of us.”

“Well, that’s why the IGR does what they do,” Arkady mutters, closing her eyes. “Torture gets results.”

Violet sounds startled. “Every credible study in the universe has shown that torture doesn’t work. You said yourself—”

Arkady opens her eyes. “Torturing someone to interrogate them doesn’t produce reliable information. People know that. That’s not what it’s for. Torture is popular across the universe, through history, because it punishes people. Controls them. Their families. Whole societies.” She wouldn’t have to explain this to Sana. “When it’s on the table, you live your whole life under a threat. The actual torturing makes the people doing it feel powerful and good, and in the environment it creates, everyone else is easier to control. Win-win.”

Violet’s eyes have gone all huge and empathetic. “Arkady—” she whispers.

Something about that look always gets under Arkady’s skin. “Calm down,” she snaps. “I know you’re incapable of not freaking out when I talk about my childhood, but no, I’m not implying I was beaten up as a kid. The guards mostly just beat on adults; I think they knew that if they went after kids too often, enough people would’ve stood up against them regardless of losses. Or hey, maybe it was a vestige of human decency. Kinda doubt it, though.” She gestures vaguely with her good hand, careful not to pull at the IV. “I mean, of course I got beat up by other kids a few times, but just in a normal way, not in a torture way—Point is, yeah, I’ve known this stuff for a long time, but it’s not like you’re a stranger to it, right? You’ve spent your entire adult life under the IGR. You knew what was happening to some of the people who were disappearing.”

Violet is staring silently at her with that look of horrified concern, but hey, at least Violet’s overempathetic mind jumping directly to Cresswin as an explanation of Arkady’s knowledge on this subject is arguably preferable to her thinking through the percentage of Arkady’s life spent in Special Forces and then as an IGR guard herself, a train of logic that she finds herself hoping Violet doesn’t follow.

But that isn’t the right way to think about it, is it, her brain points out a moment later, the way it does whenever she considers discretely concealing the most hideous parts of herself from Violet. Violet is dating her. She deserves to know what she’s gotten herself into.

“It was never like…this,” she starts. “It was never me in a room with a helpless person, hurting them. But you know I was Special Forces during the war. You know I was a guard on Telemachus. Yes, I grew up on a prison planet and it’s all very sad but once you get over your latest shock about that—you’re a scientist, you can do the math and figure out that I don’t only know how this works from one side of it.”

Violet’s eyes are getting progressively wider, and Arkady drops her gaze to stare fixedly at her own hands. “They didn’t train us on the details of it; not…techniques. I mean, I don’t doubt they had people for that, but that would’ve been above my pay grade. But me, us, those goons who got the drop on us yesterday, we’re instructed pretty clearly in, ha, ‘maintaining control over a noncompliant population.’ Not like it’s just a few backwater goons breaking bones, either. When I was a guard—”

It isn’t even that her voice breaks, not really. It’s more of a stumble over the sudden realization that her voice should be breaking, or shaking, or anything other than steady and clear.

“When I was a guard, we all knew that some of the people we were guarding would be ferried to the more, ha, specialized options. Zone Z isn’t a secret.” Her voice, still flat, is rising. “And during the war…I can’t pretend that what I did in combat was better. I killed a lot of people, Violet. I killed a lot of people and they will never be alive again. You can’t say that that’s better than being a professional torturer. I can’t pretend that, and I can’t pretend some of my unit and some the people leading us…I can’t pretend that they didn’t do…” She stares down at her body. “This kind of thing.”

Silence. Arkady forces herself to look up.

Violet is staring at her in horror, but, for once, Arkady at least agrees that it’s justified.

She can feel herself breathing hard, and her face is wet again, which is frankly an indictment of her as much as anything else in this conversation. Crying to your girlfriend for sympathy about the horrible things you’ve done to other people isn’t exactly a good look.

“Look,” she says. “Some of this will haunt me until the day I die, and that’s good. It means I’m still human; it means…it doesn’t matter what it means. It’s what I need to do whether it means anything or not. I should be haunted. I think even Sana would agree with that.” She sighs. “I can figure out a way to live with this shit, and I do, but you signing up to…you know…see…someone who you knew was a smuggler and a killer doesn’t mean you thought through the implications of the IGR part of the equation before you asked me out.” Her voice is rising in irritation even though Violet is the last person in this medbay who deserves it. “I’m not the most mobile right now, but this is your medbay, I think you can find the door—”

“Arkady.”

Arkady looks up again. Violet is making steady eye contact with her. The horror hasn’t all gone out of her expression, but her voice is firm, not panicked. “I knew, when I started going out with you, that you had been a soldier with the IGR.”

“Okay, but you also assumed anyone who’d fought in the war was a ‘war hero,’ so you’ll forgive me if I have my doubts that you grasped what—”

“Arkady.” Violet’s voice is louder now, but still very level. “In case you need the reminder, I was fully aware of both your history and what the IGR was capable of the day I asked you out. You know, the day we were fleeing New Jupiter in a stolen IGR ship? That day?” A faint note of humor has entered Violet’s voice, though it disappears as she continues, “I’m going to leave for five minutes, to go to the bathroom and splash water on my face, not for good. I’ll have my communicator if you need anything.”

“Oh.” Arkady stares at her. “Okay?” she manages.

Violet walks out of the medbay, and Arkady stares blankly at the ceiling until her footsteps reenter. As promised, the hair around her face looks damp, but she looks calmer, more settled. She sets a glass of something on the bedside table.

“I brought you some juice, which you should be able to have now that you’re up and talking, but—” She sighs. “We should probably discuss this first.”

Arkady watches her.

“Arkady, I…” For the first time since her calm monologue before leaving the room, Violet looks uncertain, then presses on. “Like I said. I did know that you had been a guard with the IGR, and I did know more or less what that meant. And I knew—” She rubs her face with one hand. “Well, I didn’t know, it’s not like you can ever know with anyone, when I was a paramedic I saw cases of domestic violence where you never would’ve—anyway. I thought that I knew that you weren’t the kind of person who hurt people for your own satisfaction, and that felt like enough.” Her eyebrows crease together. “You make me feel safe. You always have.”

Arkady can feel her face beginning to get soaked again. All the things that she feels are careening around inside her, as though her heart is a ship in a bottle and somehow, within the glass, someone has conjured a storm.

“And it…sounds like I was right?” Violet lets out a breath that could almost be a shaky laugh. “You never…you’re saying you never did to anyone else…the kind of thing that was just done to you.”

She opens her mouth again, then hesitates, her words becoming slower and more contemplative.

“You’re right, though. I’m not sure I…that in the time after I’d realized the IGR was a lot less than less than perfect, I’m not sure I ever thought through the degree to which you, as a guard, would have been complicit in…those things. And…” She sighs again. “You’re right. I do think of people who fought in the war as heroes. I mean, I never really had a chance to—or, no, I can’t sit here and claim that I never had a chance. I never let myself think about how likely it was that some of the people fighting for us were…how did you put it. Specialized at things that make me sick even to think about. But also…”

She drops her gaze to her lap.

“I…I know that you killed Dwarnians. People. I know that a lot of soldiers killed a lot of people. I mean, that’s what war means, right?” She gives another shaken almost-laugh. “And I’m not—I’ve never been the kind of person who celebrates other people dying—”

“I know you’re not, Violet.” Violet is a biologist and a medic. Her work is the stuff of life, not death.

Violet slumps lower into her chair. “Yeah. But…because those deaths feel…felt…feel…partially justified to me, because the Dwarnians were trying to conquer us…maybe I let that make me forget a little that those deaths are still…deaths.”

She lifts her face, looking Arkady in the eye, and Arkady isn’t sure what she sees there. “Sometimes I wonder whether, irrespective of everything else about our lives—” Violet makes a swirly motion with her hand, as though to encapsulate the distances between worlds. “I wonder if you always would have been the kind of person who doesn’t lose sight of the death part.”

“Interesting theory, Violet,” Arkady says, once she can get herself to speak. “Doesn’t change that I was the one of us doing the killing.”

As she says the words, she realizes that they sum out to something snarkier than she intended, but there’s no bite to her voice, and Violet seems to register that.

“No,” she says simply. “It doesn’t.”

Arkady watches Violet in silence as she scrapes tendrils of drying hair off her forehead, straightening back up in her chair.

“Anyway. I’m not walking out that door, Arkady. You’re right, I hadn’t truly thought about what it meant that you were Special Forces. There are probably things about the war that I need to…well, I’ll probably never understand them completely, but things that I need to acknowledge.” She sighs. “But I meant what I said earlier. When I asked you out, I was asking you, not some hypothetical better you. Besides,” she adds quietly, “it’s not like I don’t have my own regrets.”

There’s a pretty big difference between ‘keeping your head down and getting a college degree’ and ‘actively killing people,’ but Arkady doesn’t feel like getting into it.

She lets herself sink back into the pillow. The room feels calmer, like the air on a planet after a storm.

No, it doesn’t, Violet said, and somehow, that feels like an anchor. Violet isn’t so horrified by the things that Arkady has done that she needs to pretend that they don’t exist.

“I. Uh. Okay.” Arkady attempts a smile, though she has a bad feeling that she’s making more of a weird grimace.

Fortunately, Violet doesn’t seem to mind, giving her a smile of her own that’s only a little shaky. “I’m glad we, uh, talked about this, but I’m guessing it isn’t doing your pain any good and I’m ready to shelve it for now if you are?”

“Shelving, uh. Sounds good.” Arkady nods vigorously. “Yeah.”

“Also, you owe me an apology for snapping at me,” Violet says calmly.

“Oh.” Arkady stares at her for a second. “I…shouldn’t have done that, should I?” Great job restating the obvious, idiot. “I…” Jesus Christ.

Violet is watching her silently. Arkady takes a breath.

“Violet, I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have snapped at you about something that had almost nothing to do with you. I mean, I shouldn’t shout at you in general, that’s broadly speaking a dick move, but in this particularly context I definitely, especially shouldn’t have—”

Shut up, shut up, shut up. What is a good apology even like? Sincere. Doesn’t make it about yourself.

“What I mean is—I’m sorry.” She bites her lip. "And, uh…thank you. For, um, not holding me to a lesser standard because I was hurt.” Or because I’m someone who has hurt other people. “Not that you should have to remind me I owe you an apology, but…” She squirms. “You had enough faith in me to know I’d. You know. Want to. So. Uh. Thanks.”

So much for not making it about herself. She coughs awkwardly. “So. Yeah. Uh. You sure there’s not anything…more that you want to talk about? Because I, uh, just freaked out and dumped a ton of my garbage right into your lap, and if there’s anything else you need to say, or ask, or whatever, I’m here. I mean, I kinda can’t go anywhere else right now, but—you know what I mean.”

“Thanks.” Violet smiles a little. Arkady nods, trying to smile back and hoping this one isn’t too grimacey.

Staring at Arkady as though deep in thought, Violet says, “I don’t think there’s anything else, right now. I still want you to talk to someone about…all this…at some point. It doesn’t need to be a civilian counselor. Just…someone. But…”

Violet bites her lip. Her pained look from when Arkady hurt herself laughing is back, if it even ever left. “You have multiple broken bones and you’re stuck in bed and in pain, and right now more than talking about anything I just want you to be able to rest.”

“Oh,” Arkady manages. Helpfully, she follows it up with, “Ah.”

Violet smiles again, then hesitates. “Though, there is—"

She is staring at Arkady very intently all of a sudden, and Arkady can practically see the gears turning inside her head. She feels her own body tensing, a runaway voice inside her warning her that reminding Violet about so much of her past all in one go might mean that this is the day Violet finally does walk out the door for good.

But when Violet speaks, it’s not about the part of the conversation that Arkady was expecting.

“So…you’ve always known that torture, um, works. Ever since you were a kid.”

“What? Yeah, I—you grow up on a place like Cresswin, you get a pretty firm grasp of what torture is used for, yeah.”

Violet is biting her lip as though in deep thought. “So…when I was on the Iris…and you’d just stopped pretending to be Kay Grisham, and I accused you of wanting me to get in the cryo chamber so you could torture me for information…you said ‘We don’t torture, it doesn’t yield reliable results,’ and then you said, ‘Also, it’s wrong.’ But you believed…you knew that torture did work.” Violet’s voice is slow, her face still screwed up as though she is working something out. “Even if not for the exact purpose I was accusing you of. So…when you said all that…the reason that you, the real you, didn’t torture, that the Rumor crew didn’t torture, is just because it’s wrong.”

“Gee, Liu, glad you’re having a warm, fuzzy realization about how heartfelt and wholesome it is that our crew doesn’t torture people.” Arkady’s pent-up dread gives way to a fervent eyeroll. “Have you met Sana? Like, held a conversation with her? At any point in time? For more than thirty seconds?”

Violet sighs in annoyance. “That isn’t what—” she fires back, then stops, her voice going gentle again. “That isn’t what I meant. Do you want to try to have some of the juice now?”

“Liu,” Arkady says, a slow grin spreading across her face. “Are you keeping a lid on the snarky repartee because I’m all injured and convalescent? Because if I can say anything I want while you nobly go easy on me, can I just comment that the way that you put cereal in your milk a little at a time ‘so it doesn’t get soggy’ is mind-blowingly—”

“You’re making me. Want. To be a lot. Less. Noble. About it.”

Arkady snickers, then smiles, holding out her bruised but less-busted left hand. Violet stops mock-glaring and reaches across Arkady’s body to take it in a careful, awkward clasp, smiling at her as though…

Well, shit, Arkady doesn’t know how to put it into words, or at least not into words that aren’t all dramatic and weird. Violet is smiling at Arkady as though Arkady is some wonder of the universe that Violet can’t believe she gets to have the privilege of seeing, like a star or a comet or…whatever it is that biologists rock their socks about, a really cool bug or something.

It’s weird and kind of overwhelming, but kind of in a good way, and Arkady just wants to sit here and hold Violet’s hand, and look at Violet, and let herself be looked at by Violet like the wonder of the universe that Arkady knows that she is not but that she could, as Violet watches at her, almost believe herself to be—

“Violet,” Arkady says, wrinkling her eyebrows. “How many painkillers do you have me dosed up on right now?” She squints at the IV bag above her, dropping Violet’s hand and trying to shove herself a little more upright against the pillows. “Also, does a convalescent gal get to sit up around here? I kinda want to try some of that juice, and maybe someday even do something horribly taxing like read an update on our ship’s computer systems.”

The corner of Violet’s mouth turns up in a smile. “I’ll raise the bed. Let me know where you want to stop.”

“Right.” Arkady lies back as the fancy Iris 2 medbay bed hums its way upright. “Okay, stop.”

Raising her head from the thin pillow, she tips her stiff neck back and forth, peering around the medbay, which looks pretty much the way it always does. Sana’s multicolored crocheting bag is slung over the back of a chair.

“Let’s see, I think there’s—” Violet leans somewhere behind her, pulling out a fresh pillow and reaching forward to tuck it gently behind Arkady’s head. “Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“In answer to your question,” Violet says, still in her calm, attentive medic voice as she continues to adjust the pillows, “you told me back when I was taking down medical info on the Rumor that you prefer minimal use of sedative painkillers, and even the Iris doesn’t have any of the good non-sedative intravenous stuff, so I’ve been using the minimum of the intravenous sedative painkillers and transitioning you to our standard orals. That should mean you’re less groggy, but also that we’re blocking less of the, well, pain, so let me know if you want me to adjust the dose. It’s not all-or-nothing; I can fiddle with it a little without instantaneously sending you to another dimension,” she adds, a note of warm humor in her voice as she sits back in her chair with smile.

Arkady blinks, still stuck on the first part of that. “You did?”

“Did…” Violet frowns, visibly parsing which of her words Arkady is referring to, before her face clears in understanding. “Did stick to the minimum end of the range I considered safe and reasonable?” She gives Arkady a look Arkady doesn’t quite know how to interpret, sort of alarmed and sad. “Your medical decisions are your own, Arkady. I’m not going to override your wishes just because I care about you and seeing you in pain isn’t easy for me. Or any other reason.” Violet’s eyebrows furrow. “No one should,” she adds, in that quietly defiant tone of voice that she uses when she’s declaring something and has realized that she wants the whole universe to know it’s what she believes.

“Oh.” Arkady swallows. “Yeah.”

“We’re coming up on the next dose of the orals in a quarter of an hour,” Violet says, her voice businesslike again as she checks her watch. “In the meantime, are you ready for juice?”

“I didn’t even know we had juice.” Arkady eyes the glass with interest.

“There was some concentrate in the pantry. When Tripathi and I sorted the food, we tucked some of it away in case someone got hurt and needed easy fluids.”

“That was very forward-thinking of you.”

“On this ship, not really,” Violet mutters, holding the glass to Arkady’s lips.

Drinking from the glass as Violet holds it turns out to be somewhat complicated and require both of their full attention, but once Violet sets it back down, Arkady leans back against the pillows with a smirk. “Hey, we’re dashing space rogues. A few bumps and bruises are all part of the job.”

“‘A few,’” Violet returns, but without rancor.

“It’s my job, Liu,” Arkady snarks back cheerfully. Between the juice and the strains of one of Krejjh’s actually-good Dwarnian jazz tracks and Violet’s reassuring presence next to her, Arkady is beginning to feel more like herself than she has in a while, the helplessness of yesterday starting to feel a little further away. Even the pain is…okay, the pain is still pretty painful, actually, a constant burn at the edges of her mind.

She hesitates.

“Violet?”

“Yes?”

“Could you maybe…” Arkady licks her lips. “You said you could fiddle with the painkiller drip a little, right? Because my shitty bones kinda hurt a lot and I wouldn’t mind if they, uh, didn’t.”

“I can do that.” When Violet meets Arkady’s gaze, her voice is calm and serious. “I’ll start with a small increment. It will take about thirty seconds to take effect. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

Standing, Violet adjusts something.

Arkady waits.

“Do you feel anything yet?”

The relief is noticeable, the pain in Arkady’s chest and limbs cooling down a notch. “Better. Wow. Better.” Arkady hesitates. “You, uh. Said that that was a small increment? I think I could use another small increment.”

“Okay.” Violet makes another adjustment.

This time, the relief is almost total. Arkady stares at the ceiling, feeling tears of relief prick her eyes as the burning ache eases to almost nothing.

Everything feels a little foggier, too, but she’s still here, and able to form mental sentences, and the pain is all but gone.

“That’s good.” She bites her lip as Violet sits back at her side. “That’s really, really—the pain is almost gone. Now.”

Violet swallows visibly, staring at Arkady in relief.

Arkady feels a tear coalesce and run down her cheek, and Violet reaches forward with gentle fingers to wipe it away.

“I’m glad, Arkady,” she whispers. “I’m so glad.”

Arkady lets a long breath out, looking around the room again. It’s almost like being in a new room, a room-without-pain, during a new day, a day-without-pain.

“Sana will be glad, too,” she comments wryly as her gaze lands on the crocheting bag again. “She gets all twitchy whenever she manages to have good food or meds or supplies on hand and someone doesn’t use them.” She grins. “It’s her whole octopus thing. You know, I think I called her an octopus yesterday? Krejjh won’t shut the hell up about octopi now that they’ve found out they’re, gasp, actually real, so I guess I just permanently have octopi on the brain now, and I was thinking about how Sana has her whole multitasking thing where she’s got an eye on the status of the whole ship and everyone on the crew at all times, and—damn it, I should have called her a ghost squid. She would have hated that.”

Violet is giggling helplessly. “I can’t believe you called Tripathi an octopus.”

Arkady grins lazily. “Yeah, well, now she’s gotten to enjoy living with the mystery of what the hell I was talking about. Even sedative-induced grogginess has the occasional upside, right?”

Speaking of twitchiness, Violet’s twitchy question face is back, though Arkady can tell she’s trying to hide it.

“You didn’t override what I told you, okay?” Arkady says. “You didn’t dose me up, even when I couldn’t have done anything about it, because I’d told you not to. So I figured you wouldn’t take a mile if I gave you an inch.”

“Oh.” Violet sits back in her chair, looking at Arkady with that same expression she was looking at her with earlier, sadness and something else Arkady can’t parse.                                                                

Arkady sighs. “During the war. When you got injured, they knocked you straight out. It made it easier on the medics, I guess—no panicking soldiers, just unconscious bodies to take care of until they got better or didn’t. And easier on the medics meant less medics per ship, which made it easier on the brass. I mean, I guess that was why, though I wouldn’t put it past just being a power trip for some of them—”

“I know.”

“—but it isn’t like you can easily say when it was that and when it was—” Arkady blinks. “Huh?”

Violet sighs, her eyes dropping to her lap. “That’s not just a wartime thing. When I was a medic out by O-11, some of my colleagues used too much sedative on people they thought were being a problem. Or who…might be a problem. Aggressive, scared, not ‘compliant,’ whatever. Of course, if you paid attention to who they were more likely to think was a problem…”

“I’m guessing there were patterns?” Arkady offers.

“Yeah.” Violet bites her lip. “The irony was that…this was less of a thing out in the field, but pretty often when someone was actually in the hospital, they’d be denied painkillers because the staff decided they were lying or exaggerating. It was…” Violet twists her hands in her lap. “It wasn’t just those problems, either. When you have a lot of people living in poverty, the power dynamics with whoever is in charge of access to medical treatment get…bad. It was not a good situation, and I was—you know. There. Being part of it.”

Arkady blinks, staring at Violet. Maybe the reason she didn’t know how to interpret the look in Violet’s eyes earlier was because it wasn’t actually the panicky huge-eyed way she looks at Arkady what feels like every time Arkady mentions some detail of Cresswin, but a look of recognition.

“I never thought about what it would be like to be a medic under the IGR,” she says quietly.

Violet finally looks up. “Part of it was the IGR, but a lot of my older colleagues had come up doing the same thing. It’s like you said. Republics aren’t perfect, either.”

“Oh.”

Violet licks her lips, hunching further into her chair. “It’s like you said about the war. Yes, sure, once I wasn’t a trainee and it was me and some colleagues out on a call, we were never the ones who gave those injections, used more than was needed. But that doesn’t mean that the ones I was with were always great about other things, or that others weren’t…” She sighs. “Just because I didn’t do anything especially bad myself doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have…you know, tried to do more than I did.”

Arkady stares at Violet, considering offering her her less-busted hand again, but decides against it. If she were Violet she wouldn’t want someone pawing at her trying to offer comfort about something that can’t really be comforted.

Violet’s work is the stuff of life, she thought to herself blithely only a few minutes ago, somehow not thinking about how much being a medic had to do with death and utterly traumatic shit. And-or, apparently, standing aside while your colleagues hurt and traumatized other people and then having to live with that.

“Jesus,” she says.

“Yeah.”

They sit quietly for another few minutes.

“Well, on a lighter note,” Arkady says awkwardly, “when it comes to your current cool, awesome medic job with our little band of dashing space rogues…can I, uh, have some more juice?”

The worst of the haunted look slides off Violet’s face as she smiles. “Of course.”

When the glass is empty, Arkady does reach her less-busted hand toward Violet, tugging her forward when she takes it. “Come here.”

She thinks Violet might go for a kiss on the forehead, depending on how fragile she’s thinking of Arkady as being right now, but Violet kisses her on the lips.

Their lips move together gently for a few seconds, then Violet settles back into her chair, smiling. “Your lips are sticky.”

“Excuse me, Liu, but I feel I should point out that your lips are now also sticky.”

“Touché.” Violet grins as she stands up again. “How’s your pain? We should still be transitioning you to the orals, so I’m going to get that ready now.”

“Still good.” Arkady smiles, wiggling the fingers at the end of her cast as Violet heads for the medbay sink.

“I know you and Sana are going to grump at me and Krejjh at some point for covering you and RJ instead of running,” she calls, “and then grump at me even more for making sure they hurt me before Krejjh, but if it had to be us, you are lucky you got me as a patient instead of Krejjh, trust me. They got completely freaked out when we tried to introduce them to Necco wafer candy a few years ago and still make grim remarks about ‘humans eating chalk.’ Dissolved pills would not be an easy sell.”

She’s expecting Violet to banter something back, but Violet looks downcast when she returns to Arkady’s side.

After Arkady has knocked back the chalky goo, she watches Violet carefully as she returns to the sink. That look could be about any number of things, but Arkady has the strong feeling that she’s seen it before, the first time Violet was bandaging her up after her gunshot wound on the Gay Louisa.

“Are you mad at me?” she asks, hesitantly, when Violet sits back down.

Violet’s face crinkles up in concern as she looks at Arkady. “Mad?”

Arkady grins weakly. “You know, because I went out and got myself hurt again?”

Violet’s forehead smooths out, then re-crinkles itself a second later. “I—no, Arkady, I’m not mad that other people tortured you. Or, I mean, I’m mad, I’m—furious, but at them, not at you.” She pauses. “And yes, I’m…‘mad’ isn’t the right word, but…it makes me upset that you got badly hurt to protect me and RJ, and it makes me upset that you think it’s good for it to be you who gets hurt instead of the rest of us. But you know that the times I chastise you for getting hurt, I’m not angry at you. Right?”

She smiles on the last words, in that specific abashed way that she smiles when she’s asking for reassurance about something that she thinks is just her anxiety playing up and probably not something she should actually be worried about at all.

When Arkady just stares at her, though, a look of alarm passes into her eyes. “You do know that, right?” she asks in a smaller voice. “I would never be really angry at you for getting injured.”

“Oh,” Arkady says. “Yeah. Of course I know that.” Did she?

Violet looks like she isn’t particularly fooled. “Well, now you do.” She sighs, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry. If—hypothetically speaking, I mean,” she adds, her lips twitching in the ghost of a smile. “If you’ve ever thought I was actually angry at you for being injured in a bad situation…I’m sorry.”

Arkady blinks at her, finally managing to muster a nod.

Violet smiles a little, reaching out and smoothing Arkady’s hair. “I’m not mad at you, Arkady. There’s nothing about you being hurt and in pain that I would ever be angry about.”

“Well, not nothing,” Arkady points out. “You just said that you were upset that I try to put myself between the rest of you and danger.” She can’t resist adding, “You know, my literal job?”

“Your job is being first mate.” Violet’s voice cracks slightly.

Time to see how prohibitive this wrist cast is. Arkady lifts her hand to Violet’s face, brushing a tear from the corner of her eye. “It’s a job with a lot of facets.”

Violet sniffs wetly, lifting her own hands to gently support Arkady’s wrist as she lowers it to her lips and brushes a kiss against Arkady’s fingers.

“I’m not mad at you for putting yourself between other people and danger, Arkady,” she whispers. “In fact, it’s probably one of the reasons I fell in love with you.”

Arkady can feel her face getting hot as she stares, dazed, at Violet. “But…”

“I think it was a very brave and good thing that you did yesterday, and it scares me and makes me angry how okay you are with getting hurt to protect other people. I can feel both of those things at the same time.” Violet smooths Arkady’s hair again.

“Oh.” Arkady clears her throat awkwardly. “I. Oh.”

Violet chuckles, reaching up to dash a tear from her own eye. “You know what I feel, right now, more than anything? I’m just glad to have you back safe with me.”

“Oh,” Arkady says again. “I. Um. Hhh.” Get it together, Feral Kitten Patel. “I’m…glad to be back with you too. Um. Really glad.”

Violet smiles through her tears, and they gaze at each other in silence for a while.

“You know,” Arkady says wistfully, “I’m not exactly thrilled I can’t use a gun, or a knife, or punch anyone, or—” She cuts herself off. “Uh, you get the idea. But what I really can’t wait for is to be able to scoop you up, carry you to bed, and hold you in my arms all night long.”

“I.” Now Violet is the one blushing. “You…”

Arkady smirks, and Violet seems to regain the ability to form sentences, reaching out and caressing Arkady’s cheek. “Well, the scooping me up in your arms part will have to wait a little longer, but you should be able to relocate to your real bed some time in the next few days, and then there’s nothing stopping us from a whole lot of careful cuddling.”

Arkady smiles. “Sounds like a plan.”

“As for right now…I can’t exactly crawl into bed with you,” Violet says, sounding regretful, “but we could try…”

Pulling the chair with her, she moves so that she’s sitting as close as possible to Arkady’s shoulder, then carefully lowers her upper body to the bed so that her lower left shoulder rests just below Arkady’s right one, her face nestled into Arkady’s neck. Her left arm is presumably squashed under her, but her right hand comes up to rest on Arkady’s shoulder, thumb gently stroking Arkady’s shirt.

“Liu,” Arkady says, trying not to laugh, “that can’t be comfortable.”

Violet’s mutter against her neck sounds almost sleepy. “You’d be surprised.”

“Whatever you say.” Arkady tips her head to lean her temple against the top of Violet’s head. “Are you gonna fall asleep like that?”

“No,” comes the immediate response. “Or. Actually, this is more comfortable than I thought it would be, and I shouldn’t leave you alone for more than fifteen minutes while you’re still on the drip, and alarms are fallible so maybe I should…” She raises her hand to her comm. “Violet Liu to Iris Cockpit.”

“Attem—”

“Hello, Science Officer Liu!” sings Krejjh’s sunny voice. “How’s the patient?”

Arkady can feel Violet smile against her neck. “She’s doing pretty good, Krejjh. Hey, can you send someone down here in twenty minutes to poke me awake? First Mate Patel and I are at risk of engaging in some romantic tandem sleeping.”

“Iiiii sure can, Science Officer Liu!” The grin in Krejjh’s voice is audible, and Arkady feels a lingering echo of fear fading from her mind at the sound of them alive and well. “Aaand I’ll let you get right to it. Krejjh out.”

Arkady snorts. “I have no idea why you’re eager enough to cuddle with me that you’re willing to risk getting shaken awake in situ by a pilot making disgustingly enchanted faces at how ‘cute’ we supposedly are.”

“It’s a high price,” Violet says solemnly, her voice sleepy, “but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

Arkady snorts again, trying to ignore the growing feeling of sunlit happiness in her chest. Violet’s hair is soft against Arkady’s face and her body is warm against Arkady’s side, and Arkady stares up at the ceiling, trying to comprehend how and why she has gotten ridiculously, disgustingly lucky enough to be here, now, with Violet’s hand curled around her shoulder and the steady rise and fall of Violet’s breathing against her.

In the kitchen, someone or something makes a subdued crashing noise, and someone else cackles loudly. Arkady can feel Violet’s amused sigh, and she smiles, letting her eyes drift closed.

“I hope you play this song someday,” croons the radio, “and think of Earth girl who loves space girl…”

A gentle current of air from the vents stirs a strand of Violet’s hair against Arkady’s ear, and she wriggles her head minutely to dislodge it before tucking her head back against Violet’s. As she closes her eyes again, the feeling of sunlit happiness is so strong that she wonders if she’ll be the one to stay awake even as poor tired Violet falls asleep. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it?

When Krejjh enters the medbay eighteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds later, they have to bounce back and forth from one foot to the other in silent agony for several seconds at the sheer adorableness of the sight of their crewmates cuddled together on the medical bed. First Mate Patel’s forehead is smoothed out in sleep, a smile on her lips, and even when Krejjh nudges Science Officer Liu awake and she disentangles herself from her girlfriend, Arkady curls her head into the indentation Violet’s cheek has left on the pillow, as though even in sleep she knows that any space that Violet takes up in the universe is a place where she will be safe and sound.

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 63

I did not go anywhere today, and I know that only because I am still wearing my clothes from last night and now it is tonight. Usually when I go someplace, I at least make the effort to change my clothes. Tomorrow I must take a shower and put on clean clothes, yeesh. I am setting a terrible example for my stinky child, no wonder it's hard to get him to take a shower. Time needs to get real again very soon before we start growing fungus behind our ears or something. Anyway, we spent most of the morning preparing for and then actually having the telemeeting we were supposed to have yesterday, and it was both productive and depressing. 

Things are not getting better with my FIL; the occupational therapy does not seem to be working yet (though for fuck's sake, he's in his eighties and it has only been a week), and the staff believe it's likely that the insurance is going to kick him out soon because fuck insurance companies. The doctor at the hospital said at least two weeks of rehab, but that doesn't matter because the insurance company said 5-7 days plus reevaluation. I just do not understand anybody who says private insurance is better because it's better to be a customer than a citizen. We are customers of the insurance companies and they constantly treat us like hot garbage while we pay out the noses for the privilege. I mean, I do understand why people want private insurance instead of universal healthcare, it is because they understand that the current pool of healthcare has a limit and they want to make sure it stays limited to people with money, but that's another fucking rant. 

Anyway, he's not getting better, which means we are very unlikely to be able to bring him home when insurance decides he is done. We just can't provide the incredibly comprehensive care he needs when he forgets that he is eating with a bite halfway to his mouth and cannot brush his teeth without step by step coaching, not to mention whether we are physically up for moving him in and out of bed or emotionally up to dealing with the fact that he is often only tenuously connected to what’s going on around him. It sucks, it sucks so bad that I can't even describe it, but it's reality and it's just staring us in the face. 

The only good news is that there is a bed available at our second choice facility (we're still waiting on the first choice, but second choice is good too) and we learned that there is a move-in period where we will be allowed to send things to decorate his room. So we're brainstorming ideas about drawing pictures for the walls and making photo albums, and I might try to crochet a quick lapghan if there is enough time. The insurance is required to give us two full days notice before they cut us off, which is a heartlessly short time period, but at least it is some kind of notice. When he's in a regular room he won't be so isolated (he is in semi-quarantine till his second COVID test comes back), and we can make his room more homey, and maybe he will start to feel a little better. 

I didn't feel like eating lunch today, which was a bad choice because I ate two billion comfort snack foods instead and made myself half sick. To make up for it, I made egg noodles, hand rolled them because my pasta maker is still in Virginia, and am drying them for soup tomorrow. When I go home, I should bring back my pasta maker. And my plants. And some kittens. I wonder if I could convince my rescue to give me some weanlings, at least. If they send me healthy three or four weekers and I take along my kitten medical kit, all they'd need to give me is some Strongid and maybe some ponazuril just in case and we could telemedicine. I feel terrible because my rescue is now suddenly up to the eyeballs in kittens and I'm sitting four hundred miles away and not helping. And I know being here is more important, but god, most of the time it feels like what I can do here is pretty damn limited as well. Kittens would certainly keep me too busy to be frustrated. 

MIL fell again today because she was wearing the bad shoes, but at least she was using the walker and fell on her butt and not her knee again. These hardwood floors are a bitch and she really, really needs to walk less. A lot less. Still caught her sweeping the kitchen floor this morning, ffs. That was the subject of tonight's post-bed conversation with the kiddo; he is upset that things are rough with Nana and Papa both at the same time and that Nana is not taking care of herself. He has been watching me ride herd for days and is also trying now, with even less results than when I do it. I reminded him that Daddy and I are trying to help Nana remember to slow down, and that it is not his job to have to be the Nana police and make Nana sit down. We told him that he is doing all the right things already by fetching things for her and reading to her while she is resting, and by helping her be happier. Before we got here, things were a lot worse and Nana wasn't eating or sleeping enough, but now she is and that is very good. I also reminded him of the good things we were planning to do for Papa's new room and that he was going to be instrumental in helping with that, and that was enough to make him feel better. 

Anyway, he's gone to sleep now and I have been entertaining myself with podfic and browser games, my current go-to happy place. There's something about being able to listen to a story and play a game that requires little thought that just takes up enough of my brain that I don't have to worry or think too hard about anything, and it feels good. Gotta be careful though, out here on Day 63 where time hasn't been real for months, it's easy to lose track of how long you spend doing nothing. 

[szopenhauer]

People do you live with - are they related to you? they are indeed

Have you ever had to have surgery before? What was this for? not yet

Are you listening to any music right now? What song is it? just finished, got tired/bored of it

Who did you last hug? When did this hug take place? Where? my mom, today, home

Who was the last person to play with your hair? Are they cute? my gf, yes

Do you enjoy shopping? Who do you usually go shopping with anyways? yes, mostly looking at stuff, dad

Are you afraid of thunderstorms? What exactly makes you afraid of them? nah

What color are the shutters on your house by the windows, if there are any? we don’t have shutters

Do you enjoy talking smack to those annoying telemarketers? Is it funny? I disconnect immediately

Do you need spellcheck in order to spell things correctly? usually not Do you do too many surveys? How many have you done today? yeah but it’s smth that keeps my mind occupied in those stressful times and I enjoy it for fun - you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to, let me do what I want to survive, I don’t need to explain myself actually as it’s my life  Have you ever changed yourself to impress someone?  I regret that Who was the last person you gave up on? Why did you give up on them? I gave up on almost everyone including myself Is there ink in your printer? not black, only color Have you been outside yet today? What were you doing? taking care of trash and dog  What kind of games did you play on the playground when you were younger? many

Have you ever buried a time capsule with a friend? Did you dig it up yet? with my sister, it disappeared  Do you remember the first time you ever drove a car?  never happened  Where did you get your favorite hoodie? it’s my sister’s old hoodie Are shoes under your bed? I don’t keep anything under my bed  Have you ever been in handcuffs?  *wink* not yet :P Have you ever had to be put to sleep at a hospital?  I might for my gastroscopy someday because I have a strong gag reflex and there’s no other way :( When are you planning on moving out of your parents’ house? plan pfft... Are you a fan of dogs?  small dogs Who was the last person in your family to graduate high school? Was it you? immediate family? it was me

What genre was the last song you listened to? dance/electronic I see… Did it have a male or female vocalist? female Have you watched any of your favourite TV shows today? Which? I haven’t watched any TV show today What colour is your make-up bag? I don’t use one Have you ever dyed your hair green? yep

What color was the first pet you had? green

Have you ever had fake nails? nope

What was your favorite year of high school? definitely not the last, probably first

Would you be more afraid of drowning or being buried alive? both include choking but drowning gives you a bigger chance of survival

Does your family own more than two houses? we’re too poor for that and owning more than one house is unfair in my opinion

Would you marry someone who could never have sex for medical reasons? I’m asexual, I don’t like/want/need sex so that’s cool

What about someone who was guaranteed to die in five years? anyone can die any moment so yes

Do you have any step parents? no

Do you know what year your mother was born in? I always forget

The person you would never want to meet? someone dangerous If you were a type of tree, what would you be? weeping willow or hollow/dead tree of some sort

Favorite age you’ve been so far? childhood in general I think You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up? maybe even myself?... If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?  I don’t want a slave wtf You just found $100! How are you going to spend it? save it Are you a good kisser? am not Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?
 several times Have you ever built a snowman? of course Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets? sunrises, even tho I’m not a morning person If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create? dog + elephant Can you do any accents other than your own?  not well What is the last thing you drew a picture of?  not sure what was last

If the opportunity arose, would you ever go to a nude beach? Do you think you’d be comfortable enough, being naked among others like that? hell no, I wouldn’t be comfy enough to look at penises, gross! Have you ever considered keeping a dream journal? If you have one, have you ever looked back on it at all of the odd/interesting dreams you used to have? gonna burn it soon Do you think regifting is cheap, or is it okay? Have you ever regifted before? it’s ok, yeah

Do you like tablets or laptops more?  laptops Have you ever had to “come out” to your parents about anything (sexual orientation, change in religion, etc.)? How did it go? yep, it didn’t went well but it could be way worse What’s the most unusual kind of pizza you’ve ever tried? nothing unusual Has there ever been a time where you thought you were going to be great friends with someone, but it just never happened? yep :( What’s one of your favorite things to touch/feel? hmm... How often do you wear tights? very rarely Why is your favorite TV show your favorite? I like many but my favs I chose basing on the impact on my life Describe your favorite picture of yourself, or post it. those funniest and with my dad too I guess Assuming you have a Facebook, if one of your friends posted things that annoyed you, would you be more likely to delete them as a friend, hide their statuses, or just put up with it? hide statuses but if they’re not close to me I might even kick them out of my friends list forever, definitely won’t just put up with it When was the last time you wore a sports bra? yesterday On a scale of 1-10, how anxious are you currently? 11 How is the weather? windy

If you were a pirate, what would your name be? Sam Bell or Robin Hood unless you ask me for a nickname then I’d have to think about it more

Would you rather go the short way slow, or take the long way fast if you got there in the same amount of time? doesn’t matter

Would you rather always be in a crowd, or be the only person on earth? only person 

Do you squeeze the toothpaste from the top or the bottom?   middle?

If you had to move out of this country, what country would you move to? Why?   England or some scandinavian ones I believe

How many children do you want? Girls or boys?   0 but if any then 1 girl

If you had to lose one of your five senses, which one of them would you prefer to lose and why? smell because it’s hyper and I hate that

If you could live anywhere for one year, all expenses paid, where would you live? just my own apartment

What’s your favorite song to karaoke to? *shrug*

What takes you out of your comfort zone?   life

If you were on the cover of a magazine, which one would it be and why? I want my apartment to be on a cover of an interior design magazine

If you could be laid to rest anywhere, where would it be? Why? next to my brother and/or my dad after his death

Pool side or beach? beach

What is your favorite primary color? yellow

What is your favorite brand of bottled water? I don’t care anymore If you were to write a story, what would it be about? already written some  When was the last time you got out of your home? not counting going to my garden/yard - yesterday Do you like color pencils or crayons better? colored pencils Have you ever played Badminton? I liked to Would you ever consider running for president? nah What color is the sky right now? light blue Is March one of your favorite seasons? why not Do you write little reminders to yourself? shitload Would you want a pet iguana? I heard they commit suicide :x Exactly how many days have you been alive? 10,399 Do you know how to knit/crochet? a bit Do you enjoy windy days? I like the sound of wind and zephyr during the hottest days but that’s all

Do you believe that big goals are just as attainable as small ones? some to some

Have you ever deleted your Facebook, then brought it back? deleted and made new account

How many times a day do you change your clothes? depends

When was the last time you used spray paint? long time ago

What color are the chairs at your kitchen table? white

Do you believe that life only gets harder or easier? harder to me

Have you ever had sex with 2 different people in the same week? noooo

Are the doors of your fridge side by side or on top of one another? on top of one another

If you’ve moved out of the house you were born in, do you know the people who live in that house now? not applicable

do you sing to songs in the car when you are alone? I don’t drive so I’m never alone in the car

do you laugh at other people when they are alone in their car singing? it’s cute

the world will end in an hour. what do you do? send a cab for my dad if possible to bring him home

does the weirdest dream you have ever had involve your history teacher? that’s weirdly specific - no

how many christmas trees are in your home during the season? depends

ever told your date you were going to the bathroom and actually left? nope but if I was scared of them I could do that :o

what never fails to put you in a bad mood? ugh...

what is the first thing that comes to mind when i say green? plants

did you know that you hear/see something that relates to a monkey everyday? really? I don’t believe you

do you share a bed with anyone, or is it allll yours? it’s allll mine

are you from the north/south/west/east? personal

[quarantineculture]

quarantine day 1

Honestly, it’s not even that bad. (I say now. It’s only day 1. Who knows if it’ll get worse.) I went to bed at like 3am last night because I spent hours reading articles about coronavirus (all of which furthered my conviction that I need to be quarantined to avoid potentially infecting people) so I ended up not fully waking up till nearly noon. Mom made nice ramen and left a bowl for me at the top of the stairs. I feel like a dog. I wait for the humans in whose home I must live (but am confined to a certain area) to give me the food they pick for me, in the container they pick for me, which they leave for me on the floor. I’m not complaining though. The ramen was REALLY good. I just think it’s hilarious that I have to wait for them to leave the food on the ground for me and then they all eat together and I bring my food down to my basement.  They usually FaceTime me when we all eat together anyway so it’s not a big deal.

Having so much free time and not being allowed to really go out or socialize means I spend a lot of time cleaning. Maybe not even that much time. More like, the fact that I’m the only one who lives down here and now I have all the time in the world to spend here means I clean more than I usually do (compared to at school, when I’m only really in my room to sleep so I kinda leave things wherever because I’d rather spend my time outside my room with my friends.) But I want to have a clean living space and it’s only myself I’m cleaning up after, so it’s fine. I like keeping things neat.

One of the articles I read yesterday talked about how to keep up with your mental health while you’re practicing social distancing/in quarantine. They said you should make a schedule, so today I made a schedule for myself. It’s been less than a day and I haven’t really stuck to it much, but I like the idea of it, and the flexibility I have while still setting certain goals and allocating time for different activities. For example, even though I don’t do everything exactly at the time I set (especially meals – that tends to depend on when my family eats), just having an order to my day helps me. I like setting a goal of getting at least some school work done in the morning and afternoon, and having lunch and a walk outside to take breaks. Walking was nice – I went to the park and took a TON of pictures of ducks and turtles and frogs – but I found that when I got back I was too hungry to go back to doing work, so I ended up spending a lot of time eating and prepping food, and then went back to finishing a lecture after dinner and video games. So it’s flexible. But I really like the feeling of having accomplished some work so I can relax in the evenings without guilt.

Speaking of productivity, my friend uses this app/site called Toggl. I signed up for it for free. It basically tracks the amount of time you spend actually working on a project. You can start and stop a timer when you’re being actively productive on something and see how it adds up. Today, I spent 1 hour and 26 minutes total actively studying endocrinology. I got through around 21 slides. Some of them were pretty long. I’m pretty proud of myself even though I wanted to do another 42 slides because those slides were a lot and at least I finished one lecture.

My parents said I can go outside and get fresh air as long as I stay 6 feet away from everyone, so I went for a walk after I did a bunch of my slides. There’s a big park a couple blocks away and I spent an hour or so walking around, looking at ducks and turtles and squirrels, taking pictures of everything. So many people wear masks, especially on the streets – probably like 80% of the pedestrians I passed had them. I do live in a densely populated area. In the parks less so because there’s so much space, but as I passed one middle-aged/older man on the street he put on a mask. I also passed by a discarded mask on the street.

I wonder if people can tell that I’m supposed to be in quarantine when they look at me walking around by myself, crossing to the other side when I see someone ahead, avoiding other humans in general. I’m really glad this park is still open. Even when it seems like everything’s shutting down, it’s a relief to have at least some spaces that still bear some semblance of normalcy, where people can do yoga and play tennis and ride bikes and watch animals. The squirrels here are FEARLESS. I love them. I’m kind of obsessed with squirrels. I always have been. I’m not sure why, but I just love how cute they are! So fluffy! So quick! Their little bushy furry tails! How they hold the nut, and dig for the nuts, and chase each other around – it’s adorable! Some of them even pose for the camera and let you come really close.

Look at this good boy!

Anyways. I also made dumplings today. My sisters dropped off the dumpling wraps and the meat/scallion filling (in a metal bowl… very good for my “I Feel Like A Dog” sentiments…) at the top of the stairs and watched me looking up at them from the bottom of the staircase. I tried to use the pressure cooker. Did you know that when you’re using a pressure cooker, you’re supposed to keep the lid off when using the sauté function? Also, the pressure cooker does not have an on button. You just plug it in and push a button for the setting you want in order to activate it. It’s kinda scary. It started screaming and letting the steam out but the manual said it was supposed to be very quiet so that’s when I freaked out. You know you done goofed when the machine is literally advertised as Lets Out Steam Very Quietly and you hear WEEEeEeEeEeEEeeEEEshHhhshhhhHhshhHHHh!!!!! – less than five minutes after you turn it on. For a minute I thought it was going to explode and I would have to clean up sad deconstructed dumplings all over my makeshift kitchen area.

This post is already too long so here’s my ending summary:

THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR:

Sleeping in till noon. Having ramen delivered to me. The internet. Legend of Zelda. My family. SQUIRRELS! That the park is still open. That life goes on even in times of crisis. The crazy old men who were playing shuffleboard (I think that’s the name of it?) at the park today – fearless! My friends. Ducks and turtles too. The care package full of crochet materials that I have not yet been able to make anything resembling anything out of. Youtube for trying to teach me how to make a magic circle in crochet for maybe the fifth time. Free patterns on the Internet. She-Ra season 5 has a release date! The sleep function on iPhones.

QUARANTINE BY THE NUMBERS:

Time spent outside basement: approximately 1 hour

Screen time on phone: 4 hours 45 minutes

Toggl-logged time spent studying: 1 hour 26 minutes

Breath of the Wild: approx.. 2 hours

Explosions: ZERO!

Working on blog stuff: approx. 1.5 hours

Failing miserably at amigurumi: approx. 1 hour

Times I felt like a dog: Probably at least 3

[pisati]

I don’t remember too much about my birthday last year, besides having to work and mom taking me out to the cat cafe and the brewery. but despite having a pandemic birthday it was actually pretty nice.

I finally got 3 days off in a row. I did tell my friend Cassidy that I’d help them take their stuff to the UPS store to ship it back to CA, but I honestly thought it would only take part of the day. I didn’t mind grabbing lunch and also staying for dinner, but I didn’t really want to have to be driving all over that part of the DC area all day. which was what happened. I didn’t end up getting home til 1am, and while I DID tell them I could help, it kind of felt like a wasted day. wasn’t really an off-day. BUT Cassidy did cover all my food, got me a lovely birthday cake, and gave me some coloring book-style postcards and a little stuffed brain cell. plus a literal fuckton of crafting supplies they didn’t feel like hauling back to CA. I asked how much they’d want for it; they did say I could just have it but seriously that haul has got to be worth at least $150. there were 6 bottles of resin/hardener and those ALONE have got to be worth $80 at a minimum. they said they’d just ask $40 and like... shit, sure. that’s a goddamn steal.

they also sold me their 4x4 ikea kallax shelf; I remember helping them put it together when they first moved to MD. we took it apart and I had my brother come over sunday to help me carry the pieces upstairs. then put it together entirely by myself, which... I probably shouldn’t have done? I made it work, but that shit is Heavy and also very difficult to put together on your own. even the manual says you should have two people. every muscle in my upper body is incredibly sore now, and I managed to bruise both arms in multiple places (not even doing anything seriously injurious, I’m just an overripe banana). but in making room for it in my living room I rearranged the couches, relocated all my yarn to the new shelf from my old craft shelves (and it took up 12/16 of the cubes 🙃), re-sorted and organized the remaining craft shelves, took the two 1x3 shelves up to the rats’ room (and now they’re being used as towel storage), and actually cleaned up my living room area. my dining room table is sewing-machine-free for the first time since march. I just moved it to the craft shelves, and now I actually have the room there for the machine to just sit. the accessories have their own shelf bin. 

mom wanted to do dinner sunday night instead of today, and I guess that was okay. but it didn’t leave me much down time since I spent all day cleaning and organizing. but it was nice anyway. I got home and mom had blown up some balloons, and she had RHCP playing all evening. I’d requested homemade mac & cheese rather than noodles & co this year, and she found a pretty good recipe. she also made a cinnamon sugar doughnut bundt cake, which was good, though maybe a little dry. but served with ice cream it was better. mom told me she had another piece today and it was more moist today somehow.

mom and my brother had ordered me a bunch of things off my crafting wishlist on amazon, and those had come in during the week. my brother ordered the animal keychain molds, a mica powder dye set, black/white alcohol inks, and a silicone mold kit. mom got me a coaster mold set, another resin/hardener set, and a bunch of the sandpaper with the different grits that I really needed. I was kind of surprised she’d ordered me more things, since she already got me the huge rat cage. and she even told me today I should be getting another coaster set tomorrow, this one with 4 of the same size; the other one she ordered had 4 or 5 round molds but they were all different sizes. I can still make coasters with them, but the biggest one is small-tray sized and the smallest one is like... coin-sized, honestly. it’s tiny. and I can only make one at a time, so a set of 4 of the same size would take 4 days at a bare minimum; longer than that possibly if I were doing layers that needed to cure first. so with a set of 4 I can whip up a whole set at once. 

mom’s boyfriend got me things too, which was super nice of him. they saved it for the dinner night, so I got to open it there. he got me a geode coaster mold, the set of animal butt shaker molds I put on my wishlist kind of as a joke, but also I thought they were silly and adorable. I’m so excited to make those little shakers. also got a set of 3 trinket box molds with molds for the lids, and a little bag of snake charms I’d added so I could use the charms for mold-making; I could make my own little snake charm earrings!

so yesterday was a long day. and then I slept like garbage and woke up early this morning, but I at least got a few things done before Charlotte came over. we planned on a lazy day but since I’d wanted to make yesterday my craft day and never got around to it, I wanted to do that today. Charlotte I guess didn’t have the same idea, but she’d brought her laptop so she could play this video game she and her brother and husband and so on had played together. we ordered five guys for lunch, which is always nice. she brought me homemade cinnamon sugar cupcakes, and gave me a hand mixer, a few bath bombs, and some face masks as a birthday gift. she was right, I really do need my own hand mixer, ha. 

I finally got to work on my silicone molds, and it was super messy. I didn’t realize how much worse it would be than resin. but I tried my best to mix it well. I’d accidentally bought a $25 kit at michael’s a few weeks ago, because I’d picked it up from a clearance section and wanted to price check but forgot and forgot it was in my basket when I checked out; didn’t even realize I’d bought it until I was already back in my car looking into the bag. oops. but I ended up using the whole thing. and I had planned to make a crochet hook mold, so I was excited to try it. mom gave me an old tennis ball can that I cut up, and I used hot glue to seal it and position the hooks. I felt SO bad that it used up almost all of the silicone kit my brother got me; that shit is NOT cheap. and I was terrified I didn’t stir it well enough or mix the parts well enough because that would’ve been such a waste. but I demolded it after the few hours’ cure time and it came out beautifully. I cut slits in it with an xacto knife, so that way I can at least coax the hooks out more easily when I go to demold. it did seem like kind of a waste of a lot of the silicone, since I didn’t use up all the space, but hopefully I can sell enough crochet hook sets that I can maybe buy myself more. I’m nervous about those pours, because they’re not going to be easy, but I’m also excited bc I have a gorgeous, usable mold, and I got a ton of resin for [almost] free that I can experiment with. 

after that I finally got around to some of the resin I’ve been meaning to do. my friend in PA requested some resin earrings; she’s bought so many masks off my etsy for herself and family that after this last order I offered her a resin or crochet thing at no charge. so I’ve got to do some moon earrings; too bad I don’t have more than one moon mold. also my brother babysat some kids the last few weeks of summer and he’d taken them out to gather wildflowers for me to put into resin, so I offered to make them little resin keychains. I got little transparent letter stickers, and I’m super glad they worked as well as they did; the transparent stickers don’t show their borders in the resin so it almost looks like the letters are printed in it. I decided to make letter keychains with each of their initials, and I spelled their names with stickers in the letters. for the girl’s keychain, I added some of the flowers. I’m not sure what to put in the boys’ keychains quite yet. I’m told they’re harry potter fans, so maybe I’ll do some kind of transparent blue with gold glitter or maybe star glitter or something. I also had leftover colored resin from the moon mold so I added them to the J for my mom. nothing like the scramble for appropriately-sized molds when you’ve got extra resin. I also made another set of cat earrings, and I’ll see how those end up. I tried a drop of gold alcohol ink, and hopefully the white helped it sink. otherwise I’ve just got some weird looking cat earrings. 

(update, they turned out weird. gold doesn’t sink :/)

---

I wasn’t quite ready to go back to work today. I had a pretty good weekend, all said. don’t get me wrong, I enjoy what I do. but I feel like I need another gap year. I just want to stop existing for a while. stop having to go out and be around other people. having to talk to other people, all day almost every day. I’m tired. my brain is tired. my last gap year didn’t help with that, so I’m not sure how much good another one would do me. but I just... I need a damn break. 

I have another therapy appointment tomorrow. it may end up being my last one for a while. I already can’t really afford the copay, and I’m switching insurance to one she doesn’t take. my credit card bill this month is incredibly painful. not going to be too upset at not having to spend almost $100 a week to just ramble to someone I barely know. she’s pointed out a few things to me that I didn’t really notice I do, which is nice. but is it worth $400 a month? not right now. not when I’m about to lose my insurance and have to pay for my own. my rent is already half my pay, and now I’m going take a pay cut of somewhere around $100 a month for fucking health insurance. I hate this. I fucking hate the concept of health insurance. insurance in and of itself isn’t bad; property insurance is helpful. but having to pay money for other people to pay money for your healthcare? and you still have to hit a deductible somewhere in the thousands before insurance will even start covering your shit. and even then they can decline coverage or only cover parts of your expenses. literally what is the point

 back to worrying I guess. 

I’ve started a kind of ridiculous undertaking at work as a side project, now that I’m done scanning all the files that were up front. I printed out the list of all the clients in our system that had physical folders, and I’m going through the scanned records and making sure the active ones have new client paperwork and the hours disclosure attached. the head receptionist asked me to start with the ones my former coworker had scanned in, and there are a lot of disclosures missing. some are missing both. I don’t know if he just didn’t scan them or if they didn’t have them at all or what. but I’ve been putting alerts in charts so people know that they need to give the forms to the clients when they come in. we had one client get kind of mad that he’s been coming to us for 10-some years and didn’t want to fill out the paperwork again, even after we clarified it was for our records and for legal reasons. but whatever. 

I don’t know how many physical folders there were, but the list is very long. the folders go from 0 to somewhere in the 8000s I believe, but thankfully a lot are missing. missing as in possibly inactive, so there might only actually be 1000-2000 or so. but I’m going through every single one of them. I made myself a little system with highlighter colors: yellow means the client is active and they need something filled out (and I mark on the sheet what they need), purple means they’ve been seen within 3 years but more than 1 year ago, and they need to fill out something, pink mens inactive, and orange is kind of a catch-all for things like active clients who have recently moved (not sure whether to mark those as inactive). so far, since starting this a week or so ago, I’ve managed to get through 4 pages and a little bit on a 5th. many, many more to go.

the head vet wants to turn the back room into a little employee lounge area of some sort, but we want to get rid of those shelves first too. which means I have 2 big shelves of folders left before I’m officially done. thankfully the files in the back should *mostly* be clients that are inactive, but I still have to go through all of them to make sure. I know I’ve gone back there a number of times to find a folder for an active client because I wasn’t sure whose phone number was whose and I knew it would be in the record. 

---

I’ve been writing this post over the last two nights but I keep falling asleep while I’m writing. I did a lot more resin stuff last night, so I ended up going to bed pretty late. I wanted to finish up those keychains but I’m bad at gauging how much resin I’ll need for things so I ended up with a lot of random extra pours. I’m excited about a few of them; I poured a few into the new molds I made so I’m looking forward to seeing how those turn out. 

not really sure where I was going with this. not really sure where I’m going in general. I’m just going. trying to keep up with work, trying to remember doctor appointments. trying to keep the rats happy and as healthy as I can get them, trying not to let the cat get on my nerves too much. trying to do crafts. trying to remember to talk to people, but I don’t know. I feel lonely sometimes but since I’ve been working so much I kind of just want to be alone. I don’t have the energy for conversations a lot of the time. 

---

hm. maybe another post for therapy thoughts. I was asked to think about a few things.

[mysterydreamworld]

My Acute Anxiety Attack

This passed Memorial Day, I had my husband take my to the Emergency Room.  You would think the amount of times I spend sharing my story verbally that I wouldn’t get anxious just thinking about that night.  Truth is, that night still scares me and it was just about 2 weeks ago yesterday.

My husband and I were in West Virginia with his parents at their house.  That Saturday we got there in the just about late afternoon.  My stomach was already starting to feel a little upset, but I thought maybe it was just because I hadn’t eaten anything.  We ate lunch and then went on a hike.  We hung out - we had dinner.  We played with spinning tops called Bayblades.  That night we went to go to sleep I was in the bathroom constantly.  I felt so sick to my stomach.

I managed to get some sleep - not a whole lot but some.  I woke up the next day thinking that I felt better.  We had breakfast, went on an early morning hike.  We played with the BB guns and the bow and arrows.  We then had lunch - at that point it started to rain.  So, we hung out inside and I started crocheting because I was itching to do that all weekend.  Then all of a sudden I started to not feel well again.  I thought eh whatever it will pass, but it just escalated and got worse.  

The hubs and I planned on driving home that Sunday which is exactly what we did.  However, we had to take turns driving because I was not feeling well and he was exhausted.  It was my turn to drive again and I felt my whole body buzzing, I felt light headed, I felt like my heart was racing and I felt like I was going to be sick.  Right before the border to our home state the hubs and I switched places again.  As we were going to swap places my whole body felt numb and it felt really heavy.  I felt like I was going to pass out.

At this point I had asked my husband to take me to the Emergency Room.  We were in the Emergency Room for just about 7 hours.  They took my blood, gave me fluids, did a CT scan of my chest.  They didn’t find anything.  They sent me home and basically told me that I was dehydrated and I needed to drink plenty of fluids.  They also told me to follow up with my Primary Doctor.

The hubs took me home and I went to sleep.  2 days later I went to my Primary Doctor.  As I was driving to my Primary Doctor the same feelings washed over me.  I had to pull over several times, when I got to my doctor’s office I was so frantic.  I was holding myself together by a thread.  Once my doctor walked into the examination room I started balling my eyes out.  I told him what happened.  I told him how I felt.  I gave him the piece of paper from the Hospital.  He asked me, “What do you think this is?” - and I said, “Panic Attack”.  He said, “You need to talk to someone, whatever it is that’s going on inside your head you need to get it out.”  He stayed with me for a lot longer then was needed.  He told me to look up Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Acute Anxiety - signs and symptoms.

So now my journey begins with the battle of Anxiety.

[szopenhauer]

have you ever gotten to the point where you’ve said “i’m done trying”? I’m done trying... do you hate it when people talk about you? yeah

do you have any candles in your room? no, what for?  does anyone know every little detail about you? it’s impossible but there are few people who know a lot did you kiss or hug anyone in the last 100 hours? sure has anyone told you a secret lately that you aren’t allowed to tell anyone? I’m not good at keeping secrets who was the last person you saw besides family? some strangers on the street?... whose bed other than yours did you last lay on? Gosia’s  do you think you would lose a lot of friends if you gained 100 pounds? who said I have friends? but I would lose my gf  when was the last time you talked to the first person you kissed? today but not face to face who was the last person you got into an argument with? family member what were you doing at 4am? sleeping has anyone ever called you a bitch? yup do you have alcohol in your house? nooo

is there someone in your life you know you’d be better without? yup have you ever witnessed abuse in your friend’s family? ex friends’ when was the last time you jumped on a trampoline? never

how much money is in your wallet? not sure but not much like 20 PLN or smth how far have you gotten with the book you are reading? didn’t start it yet lol who did you last tell to shut up? not sure who was last who were you with tonight? parents what did you last draw? doodles?

who’s the last person you talked to about sex? partner are you stubborn? can be at times do you tend to hold a grudge? often

has anyone called you perfect before? perfect to them where is the biggest scar on your body? I don’t really have any big ones would you date someone who was addicted to drugs? doubt it if you could go back and change something in the past 5 months, would you? maybe do you get along with girls? I don’t get along with anyone think of the last person who said i love you, do you think they meant it? sigh... have you ever kissed anyone with a tattoo? I haven’t do you know anyone who drinks a lot? plenty of people is there anyone holding a grudge against you? probably would you ever get plastic surgery? meh what were you afraid of the most when you were a kid? dentists, I’m not scared anymore do you ever miss your past? very how have you felt today? ugh... are you nice to the people you dislike? if I have to, I prefer to avoid/ignore them  you kissed someone today, didn’t you? not today do you know how it feels to be cheated on? could say so someone tells you that your beautiful, you say? bullshit are you wearing anything you borrowed from someone? no way do you like to make the first move? depends when was the last time you completely broke down? this day do you swear often? sadly would you go out in public looking the way you do? besides the fact that I have wet hair is your hair long enough to put in a ponytail? too short what are you thinking about right now? shitload of stuff do you get irritated easily? omg yasss do you like taking walks? I enjoy walks

approximately how much is everything you’re wearing now worth? not counting slippers that costed 10 or 15 PLN - about 20 PLN (store bought socks and undies, then crop top, pajama pants and hoodie from second hand) did you set up a real or fake tree for christmas? fake, I’m against real ones do you tend to read the book only after watching the movie adaptation? I tried to read books after watching a movie, not before, and only Five feet apart was good when’s the last time you played a board game? recently

have you ever had anything stolen by a monkey (or any other animal) at the zoo? nope would you rather bungee-jump or dive with sharks? neither do you know anyone who’s like regina george from mean girls? used to do you know anyone in a fashion school? same, I wanted to go myself  have you ever been to a country where you didn’t speak their language at all? I didn’t leave my country and don’t plan to if you have a sister, does she wear makeup? on special occasions do family reunions excite you or just simply freak you out? freak me out! do you pop your pimples or just wait for them to go away? pop has anyone ever coughed or sneezed directly on you before? that was gross how often do you say you’re sorry? I don’t know anymore... how many relationships have you been in? no idea how I should count them last hickey was from? I’ve never had a hickey and don’t wanna have you ever put a kick me sign on the back of someone? don’t do that  is there any inappropriate pictures of you anywhere? what do you mean? what do you hate more, getting up, or going to bed? getting up is worse how many times do you tend to sneeze in a row? 1 why are dogs better than cats? don’t climb on furniture, can’t escape from the garden, don’t bite and scratch like cats, you can keep them outside, you walk them (I know you can walk a cat too but it’s considered weird), you can pick a size and dog breeds have more differences than cat ones do karma; believe or don’t? world isn’t fair to believe in karma

what woke you up this morning? mom, scared the fuck outta me 

did you kiss or hug anyone today? hug

what was your first thought this morning? had to help my mother

do long distance relationships work? they’re cool

what do you want to be when you grow up? I grew up and am a nobody

who do you wish you were with right now? I’m ok being on my own

do you own more than one cell phone? not working

do you use ebay to buy or sell? I wish

have you ever sang in public? karaoke and school theatre

what do you like to listen to before you go to bed? spotify, random songs from my playlist, I skip those I’m not in the mood for

do you have a job? unemployed

have you ever loved someone and were too scared to tell them? had a crush and wasn’t scared, just knew it’s pointless as they liked boys

next concert? no plans, meh

have you ever been awake for more than 2 nights straight?: it seems

anything you’re giving up on?: ... where will you be in 2 hours?: in my bed will you be sleeping alone tonight?: yep did you say “fuck” today?: I suppose

when was the last time you took a pet to the vet?: last year did you ever play any computer games when you were little?: I was a teenager do you enjoy going to the dentist?: I don’t mind does your mom crochet blankets?: not blankets

if you don’t recognize the number of who’s calling, do you answer anyway? this year I started to because I am waiting for important calls

do you ever suspect that people who make your food are going to poison it? when I worry they have a reason for that, paranoia

if you don’t like something, do you make sure everyone knows? hmm...

do you have any notes saved on your phone? had plenty on my blackberry but as I use smartphone now I just save notes in drafts on tumblr instead

when was the last time you went to the skating rink? high school, first and last time

when’s the last time you played barbies? I kept them but I didn’t play them in ages

do you hear more airplanes or trains go by your house? both, also helicopters

what’s the last thing you looked at under a microscope? something in biology class, I don’t recall

have you ever had sex while drunk? never been drunk what is the most disgusting song you’ve ever heard? smth about a guy who killed a woman, raped the body and then ate it

do you remember the first time you kissed the last person you kissed? partially are you waiting for someone to call you right now? not at night

who can make you laugh no matter what? Gosia, dad

when is the last time you saw your boyfriend/​​girlfriend?​​ yesterday 

do you like roller coasters? hate them last time you felt bad about something? when I don’t feel bad about smth?... are you a type of person who cares what people say about you? only if they can hurt me physically do you think you’ve changed over the past year? I know plans for today? the day is over ever go camping? been, pilgrimage current cell phone ringer? vibration or Gravitonas - People are lonely

How many blue-eyed people have you kissed? 0

Are you wearing anything that has any kind of pattern on it? my pants have SW (Vader) pattern on it 

Who was the last curly-haired person you talked to? Gosia

Does frequent use of swearwords offend or upset you? I do it frequently but there’s limit anyway

Who was the last person you talked to, whose name started with ‘S’? family member

When was the last time you turned down an invitation to go somewhere? Why? was supposed to go shopping tomorrow but I have no time nor energy/mood and money to do that

Is there anyone on your “friends” list that you dislike? *nervous laughter*

Has either of your parents ever borrowed your computer? it doesn’t belong to me but to my dad but he hardly ever uses it

Are you living with anyone that isn’t related to you? I live with my parents

Do you prefer drinks in bottles or cans? bottles

Which one of your relatives are you most likely to argue/disagree with? those that I still talk to? my sister

Have your parents met the person you’re currently interested in? last week

When you’re interested in someone, do you let them know? usually

Do you know a Robert?  neighbor Who was your first major crush? Ż. B. I believe

Do you still talk to that person? nope

Were you well-behaved as a child? I was

Is there anything happening tomorrow, that you’re looking forward to? sort of

Is there anything you need to do, that you’re trying to avoid doing? could say so

Did you have a good day yesterday? it wasn’t bad

What about today? How has your day been so far? lets not talk about it

Do you think tomorrow will be enjoyable for you? wish me luck

What do you like the most about your own appearance? my veins, I know it’s strange

What are the chances that you will kiss someone tonight? no chance

Does the last person you text messaged have any tattoos or piercings? they don’t

Do you know what the person you have feelings for is doing at this moment? sleep

When was the last time you had an alcoholic drink? years ago I tried absynth 

When was the last time you had a difficult decision to make? sigh...